The other strand of political implications thought(*) that I took away from the film "No"
was about the relationship between means and ends. It’s a classic anarchist obsession but
I’m nothing if not classy, so here we go. (This one genuinely does include a massive
spoiler as to how the film plays out, so break here.) ---- As I mentioned before, García
Bernal’s character is an advertising executive heavily involved in strategising the "no"
campaign’s message, which wins by presenting a positive, hopeful face to a Pinochet-less
Chile. A film presenting the top-down approach succeeding in winning the election could
make the film politically offensive to the mass struggles and collective action against
Pinochet and other South American dictatorships. However, there’s an ambivalence in the
events and character’s response to the victory which makes it a much more complex and
interesting film.

On election night, the No campaign’s HQ is surrounded by the army, the results trickle in
slowly, there is tension. The campaign realises that they have won only when army
withdraws and the TV news shows Army generals on their way into a crisis meeting with
Pinochet. When one of those generals states the (hitherto secret) results to a camera, the
No campaign realise: Pinochet is finished, they’re telling him to go.

Not the people, the generals.

Most of the campaigners are ecstatic, not our hero, he appears to be in shock. The
alienation he’s shown that whole night (since being caught up in a police attack on a
rally in the previous scene) is now up front. He walks past the "head" of the campaign
claiming personal credit in a live interview and out into the street. Only when his son
gets his attention does he look happy at the result.

Why the long face? I think he’s realised that their (his) depoliticised approach has won a
battle against dictatorship but retreated from the wider war for social justice that his
estranged wife is committed to. The wrap-up scenes show that Chile’s next president was a
figure from the Right, Pinochet and the army machinery remained in place and there was no
change in the economic policies that people were suffering under. Most damningly, García
Bernal goes back to work at his advertising agency alongside the boss who had run the
"Yes" campaign; the boss is still in charge, GGB is back to hocking telenovelas using
helicopter stunts.

The same propaganda tricks he used to help topple Pinochet are used to keep the rest of
the status quo in place. By removing the politics from the message Chile enters
"post-ideological" times but in fact the struggle to de-juntaise(**) Chile wasn’t complete
for at least another 25 years. The film’s willingness to show this saves it from liberal
cheerleading.

I said last week that class struggle is a turn off; but it has to be the core of our
politics. There’s nothing wrong with reforms, especially ones that bring about
improvements in our conditions(**) but as anarchists we recognise that there has to be
more than the piecemeal ameliorations that the State can snatch back when it has the upper
hand. Fighting for reforms is important, but how we fight (using libertarian methods,
empowering the class as a whole, "prefiguratively") is at least as important.

(*) It’s like Mao-Zedong Thought, but wobblier)

(**) No longer being at risk of getting thrown out of a helicopter: wicked good reform.

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Say “No” to class struggle

The Oscar-nominated film No starring Gael Garcia Bernal claims to tell the story of the
only dictator ever to be voted out power: General Pinochet of Chile. It’s visually
striking and for a politically-themed film the story is unusual: it focuses on the details
of the television advertising campaign in favour of a "No" to Pinochet vote in the
referendum of the early 1980s. It’s worth watching in itself but here I want to write
about what it says about political campaigning (do I need to put a Spoiler Alert here
because I’ll give away the ending if I say that Pinochet is no longer in power?)

They take the negative "No" and turn it into the positive "No more!" and further than
that, they reject the "this guy is a bastard" approach to the odious, mass-murdering
crook. Testimony of abuses, torture and everyday misery are sidelined in favour of making
people feel positive. I got to thinking how I’ve always hated the phrase "class struggle"
to describe my politics. Accurate as it is, necessary qualifier that it is, still it takes
two words with unpleasant associations and bolts them together to conjure images of school
bullying or failure to fit in(*).

Why would anyone want to get behind that? (**)

Anarchism’s emphasis on freedom and individual / collective liberty is a much better
selling point. Everyone loves Freedom (***), to the point where that word is fought over
and captured by those who take it from us. "Free markets" and "freedom of choice" are
parodies of real life under consumer capitalism. Every bampot right-wing "libertarian" who
wants the "freedom" to own wage-slaves. Every CBI gobshite that cuts workers’ protection
in the name of "freedom from red tape." We should be jealously defending it from them and
emphasising it more in our activities.

Freedom is ours, it’s always been the anarchist thing. And it goes beyond shallow
individualism. We want freedom from work, freedom from want and freedom from toil. I can’t
be free to be my best self if I’m in a community that’s stunted by need, racism, or
sexism. No-one is free until we all are free.

That’s real economic freedom: anarchist communism.

(*) is it just me? You make your own associations then.

(**) even before we get into "anarchist" with all its mad-bomber baggage…